Designing and building an online fulfillment platform

A delivery services company came to us with the idea of building a fulfillment platform they could use for multiple small clients. The idea was for small merchants — say, someone running an Etsy shop online — to be able to warehouse their items in the company’s facility and also to route their shipping through the company instead of having to haul packages to a postoffice or UPS store.

This would offer efficiency for these small merchants, many of whom run their businesses as side gigs — and allow the company to have a diverse array of customers for its warehousing and shipping businesses, rather than relying on one big retailer. It would also allow the company to compete in the growing third-party logistics (3PL) market.

The company came to g2o to help them design, build, and integrate into their business a flexible technology solution because of a good reference from a previous partner and our proven delivery capabilities.

But along the way, the company was bought by FedEx and we were suddenly collaborating on a solution for much larger fulfillment needs. Now, the solution needed to accommodate the kinds of large retailers FedEx served.

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For this project, the team successfully executed user research, design, and front-end development, and collaborated with a team of developers to integrate the front-end code into a portal platform, known as FedEx Fulfillment.

Our team launched an initial set of features and capabilities and continued to actively partner with the client on the design and development of additional releases. The team captured feedback from customers using the live platform and incorporated the feedback into the ongoing design.

This iterative approach allowed for features to be rolled out quickly — and for our team to collaborate with FedEx to make changes as needed— rather than waiting for one massive rollout.

With this new platform, retailers who leverage the fulfillment service can:

• Manage inventory with real-time data
• Track orders from time-of-purchase to delivery
• Control how orders and returns are processed
• Process returns at the company’s retail locations
• Easily connect to major e-commerce channels

The solution has positioned FedEx to capitalize on the incredible 3PL market growth and to strategically increase their shipping revenues from their growing fulfillment partners.

The platform we built in collaboration with FedEx was named a top alternative to Amazon in an article by FinancesOnline.com. And FedEx business customers have responded positively.

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